In January 2010 I had an idea to build a FPV aircraft and figured a Tri-copter would be the best layout as the front rotors are spread far apart allowing a clear view.

in January I had searched the net and was not able to find anything like this so I thought it was a neat innovation.

I started initial testing of the v-tail towards the end of January as you can see in the YouTube videos. I had the YouTube videos locked as private until today.

I always killed the gears in my yaw servo for one reason or another. so I thought about creating a servoless Tri-copter. which turned out to really be a hybrid of a Quadrocopter.

I'm a Mechanical Designer Engineer so unfortunately I was not able to design and write code to create a "proper" Flight Controller for this
All I was able to do at the time was use standard off the shelf parts and see if could just prove out the V-tail concept. Well as you can see the craft works but seriously needs a proper FC to control it and make it stable enough for FPV use.

I really could use some help from you guys to get a flight controller setup for this platform. I had thought about modifying the Shrediquette FC but I do not know enough about programming to re-do the mixer code.

I had been keeping this project secret but I found I cannot progress and finish it on my own now. I originally intended to use the FMA Co-Pilot but then did not want the environment dependency it required. I really wanted an Accelerometer based auto leveling system.

I designed the chassis before I bought all the electronics gear so really this chassis was too small in my opinion. I used Easton "cammo hunter" arrow shafts for the booms and L.A Heli MaxiR boom clamps and carbon BL motor mounts. The arrow shafts flex a lot and need to be supported to remove the flex. this was purely a POC ( Proof of Concept ) platform.

I intended to scale this up to a much larger size and have removable booms.

anyway here is the Viper Recon prototype that flew with off the shelf parts.

it was very windy in the flight video.

I used a Skookum SK360 for the 2axis gyro and a coaxial mixer and standard gyro for the v-tail.